Post your concept of God

[SirFshAlot]

'Gods' are what we, with our puny little minds, would call forces and energy when we don't understand them

Elledan
Have you become the spokesperson for the puny little mind club?

 

[Elledan]

SirFshAlot, you've yet again proven to be closed-minded.

I pity you.

 

[Electric Amish]

I love the text from the scroll in Stigmata.

That was the first place I found what I feel put into words.

Anyone know where I can find that text??

amish

 

[Azraele]

I picture an all-consuming light. Since that was my first and simplest impression to your question, I think I'll leave my answer at that.

 

[obiwaynekenobi]

Post your concept of god:

Since when was god a defineable deity?

 

[Scrapster]

Easy, myself.

 

[Optimus]

I don't picture God as a physical entitiy - to me God is something we cannot yet comprehend - pure, true power, love, good, justice, charity, etc.

 

[SirFshAlot]

Elledan,

SirFshAlot, you've yet again proven to be closed-minded.

I pity you.


So you take my words towards you some time back about you being closed-minded and now try to fling them back, eh?
Well, if you are nothing more than a little parrot, so be it. Fling away with other peoples' words, as you have no original thought of your own.

And, I relish your pity.

And, speaking of relish, you're a weinie.


I've noticed that you frequent religious threads, although you claim to be atheist.
This trend/tendency would make some tend to think you have some real issues of bitterness towards religious folk. Maybe you were dumped by a Christian girl? Maybe the local church sponsored scout troop didn't tolerate your whiny, poor-me-entitled attitude?
Get over it.
If God exists, it's not because of you.

 

[Wallydraigle]

I imagine God as the greatest living thing. How do we quantify life? All of the forms of life that we know of share certain characteristics, but none of these things make something alive. Life is the most complex type of structure we know of. The next most complex is a crystal, and it does not come even close to the level of complexity of a living thing, even the simplest. However there is one thing that is more complex than all living things we know of. What could possibly be more complex than the universe itself? I believe that the universe is sufficiantly complex to be a thinking being in its own right. That's my God. In that way God is omnipresent and all knowing. And each of us is a little piece of God. It's our job to nurture and make the universe a better place. I think that in future days we will seed the universe with life. I don't think we are the only people in the universe, but there is definitely room for more.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Shingru Miyamoto (sp?)

 

[Buddhist]

Elledan
"What does energy look like? Can you share with us what image forms in your mind when someone says the word 'energy'?"

You don't see Energy in my perception. You feel it, like air only more consistent throughout everything.

With regards to this...

"'Gods' are what we, with our puny little minds, would call forces and energy when we don't understand them. That's why wind, lightning, floods, light etc. were all seen as gods (or being caused by certain gods) some time back in history."

Thats a bit of an offensive statemenet to believers don't you think?

I'd hardly call Thomas Aquinas, Einstein and numerous other geniuses who have worked to solve the mysterious fabric that is our universe in their own way, "puny little minds."


and elledan..."SirFshAlot, you've yet again proven to be closed-minded."
that was definately sirfishalot's line he said to you a couple of days ago.

-M.T.O

 

[Athanasius]

From a human perspective, any image I form of God is bound to be false and leads me into idolatry.

My imagination pictures a throne (from biblical imagery) with light/ energy streaming forth. But personal (or super-personal), not impersonal. The highest life form we know of is man. Since man has personality, will, emotions, preferences, etc., I think that God would, or would have something superior to that of which personality, etc. is but the dimmest reflection.

Most modern concepts of God decry "making God after man's image" and thus strip the concept of any positive attribute. I understand the motive, but the result leaves us with a vapid force that is less than human, not more than it.

If man is the highest life form we can see, than we can never accurately picture God. It is at least as hopeless as drawing a three dimensional cube on a two dimensional surface. We may get a faint glimpse, but only by representing what really are ninety degree angles as acute angles.

To me, some Hindu form of monistic panentheism or the Christian concept of the Trinity is the most advanced concept of God that I have encountered from purely philosophical terms. If I gave a simple summary of the Christian concept, it would be:

Father = God's Unseen Essence
Son/Word = God Seen and Revealed
Spirit = God Experienced

The best image of God is the one He gave of Himself: Jesus of Nazareth. God as He is in the highest life form we know of: Man.

 

[RossGr]

Thanks all for the execellent posts, I find this a interesting read.


Athanasius: I believe that somewhere in the bible it claims the light of a 1000 suns at gods shoulder? This can be used to calculate the temperature of heaven, It turns out to be significantly hotter then hell which is only at the temp of moltan sulfur. This is an old joke floating around University Physics departments, I am sure, everywhere.

Of course I am sure that is not really the case.

I use the concept of god to fill in the cracks left by what man cannot observe or measure. Why Life, I don't know therefore god.
God cannot exist in the universe as a material object, if it did it would be observable/measureable, therefore can only exist as a force, like gravity, of which we can observe the effects of but not see directly. Thus god is the force of life, the force which drives evolution towards intellegent life forms. Why? I don' know, Why does gravity work, I don' know, It does, I can measure the effects.

D'oh Gotta go.

 

[Aihyah]

God is all good, all powerful, all knowing.

which means god isn't mesh well with reality




unless god is evil.

 

[Azoth]

<<God is all good, all powerful, all knowing.>>

Okay, lets disect this.

First off, when you say God, it is assumed by many that the reference is to the Christian God.

God is all knowing, so knew that Lucifer would turn on him/her/it and yet still allowed him/her/it to be created and/or to live. If God is all powerful, then he/she/it would have the capability to totally destroy evil, yet found out that would be impossible. If God were to wipe out evil, then God could not be good for there would be no radical extreme to measure against.

Even in Revelations, it states that God will cast Lucifer into a bottomless pit, not kill him/her/it. That again, is due to the fact that God can not destroy Lucifer.

I would think that by those standards, God is all neutral, pretty powerful, yet not all powerful, and all knowing...

Oh, by the way, to stay on topic, I agree with datalink7... Gandolf would make a cool God

Flames on my opinion are readily accepted and rapidly ignored

 

[yellowperil]

I heard this from a pastor who was quoting another preacher:

&quot;God created us, and we decided to return the favor&quot;

If a God exists (and I'm not saying it doesn't) its image is beyond our perception. Whenever I hear God I still think of a Caucasian man with shoulder-length brown hair, a beard, and a white tunic. This is through years of Sabbath School and all the visuals they used to teach us. I've been to churches where many of the members want to worship the 'white Jesus', the one with good Western middle-class values, so that's the way he's portrayed.

 

[element]

&quot;I believe that somewhere in the bible it claims the light of a 1000 suns at gods shoulder?
This can be used to calculate the temperature of heaven, It turns out to be significantly hotter then hell which is only at the temp of moltan sulfur. This is an old joke floating around University Physics departments, I am sure, everywhere.
&quot;

That's funny. It's funny because light of 1000 suns does not equate to any specific temperature. You can have light without heat, in case you didn't know. Also the light of 1000 suns may not be indicating sunlight specifically, but light as bright as 1000 suns, again not indicating temperature. Also it doesn't say where the light is directed to. So if the light is not cast upon heaven, then it will not heat heaven even if it is hot sunlight and the surface (wherever that may be) absorbs it. In fact we all know it is not just 1000 suns but many more, we call them stars. They are directed all around but the heat isn't much on a distant planet now is it?

Ok now on to what god is for me. I haven't given it too much thought so take this with a grain of salt because my mind can change at any time. God for me is a force. If you're familiar with basic physics you might know what entropy is. Basically entropy is the state of disorder of things. The more entropy the more disorder. One of the laws of physics being that if no forces are acting on a system then the state of disorder rises.

Knowing this I cannot imagine how certain things in the universe got to be so orderly on their own, or randomly as the big bang theory suggests so far. Things like a brain for example. So I figure some force had to act upon them to get them to this orderly state. Since we (as intelligent and capable as we are) do not yet know how to create something as complex as a human mind, I would say that this 'force' would have to be either much more intelligent than we are or extremely lucky to get all the atoms and all the molecules and all the cells in the right order to create what I see before me.

I call that force god.

 

[RossGr]

<< That's funny. It's funny because light of 1000 suns does not equate to any specific temperature. You can have light without heat, in case you didn't know. >>



It's called a blackbody problem, and yes light does imply heat. Color is signifant, the color of a star is a direct relation to it's temperature, since the light at gods shoulder is assumed white, it is quite hot. Also the assumption is the concentrated light of 1000 stars vs the distributed light we see in the night sky.



<< This is an old joke >>



So don't get to up tight, God would have to have a shoulder for me to take this to seriously.

 

[aniki]

Life, entity that fills the universe

 

[element]

RossGr, still it does not say anything about any surface in heaven absorbing the light, so there is nothing there indicating heaven's temperature.

Also I'm not being uptight, I'm just having fun discussing this stuff.

 

[RossGr]

<< , still it does not say anything about any surface in heaven absorbing the light >>



You are right about that there has to be something to heat up.

 

[joohang]

I believe that the forces of nature is God itself.